“XxFoxlyxX: John?” he called out.

Foxly equipped a spare set of clothes which he would typically wear in combat.

The small gambling club he left his character off at last night was now empty, the furniture, the players, John’s throne of clothes and armour, all gone.

Foxly called out for JohnWillStab again, JohnWillStab always logged in before the rest of them.

“Hempurn: Did he rob you too?” asked a player sitting against the wall.

Not bothering to explain the complicated situation, Foxly nodded.

Technically, he only lost a few hundred gold and a set of relatively cheap clothing, he had several spares of course.

“XxFoxlyxX: Yeah, did you see him anywhere?” he asked.

Hempurn shook his head.

“Hempurn: Nah, everybody’s been looking for him since a few hours ago…”

XxFoxlyxX glanced down to the global chat and noticed Hempurn wasn’t lying, the entire global chat was burning with lust for John’s blood.

Confused, Foxly entered the global chat.

“XxFoxlyxX: What the f#*k happened when I was offline?!” he demanded.

A few players stopped their bloodthirsty demands for long enough to explain the situation.

“Edgylemon: That bastard was a cheater! He scammed us out of all our items!”

“John? A cheater?” Foxly thought.

“XxFoxlyxX: A cheater? I know he was pretty lucky… in fact I kind of assume the game was glitching out after the fiftieth win, but a cheater?”

“Stampler: There is literally NO way that he could have won 1063 bets in a row!”

Foxly raised both eyebrow.

“XxFoxlyxX: Which one of you saw 1062 wins in a row and decided to play against him?!” he demanded.

“Kevin: This is no time to shift blame, Foxly…” he replied awkwardly.

“Olivionion: No idea what he did, but I’m down to kill him!”

Foxly breathed a flustered sigh.

“Damn it… what kind of shit did he get himself into this time…?”

“Did he really cheat?” he wondered.

Foxly shook his head, “Of course not! He’s not smart enough to know how to cheat!”

Foxly scratched his chin.

He opened his friends list and saw that JohnWillStab was, in fact, still online.

“Aha!”

Foxly tried to send John a private message.

“XxFoxlyxX: John, what the f#&k did you do?!” he demanded.

No reply came, of course no reply came, it was John – he never checked his private messages.

“Shit…”

He invited JohnWillStab into his party.

“This player is already in a group!” read the error message he received.

Foxly pinched the bridge of his nose, he had no way of contacting JohnWillStab.

Without being in John’s group, he couldn’t even track him on the map.

“XxFoxlyxX: Crown!” he exclaimed, suddenly realizing who was most likely behind this.

He opened his friends list and confirmed that she too was online.

“XxFoxlyxX: WHAT DID YOU DO TO JOHN!?” he demanded in his private message.

Unlike John, ♛ actually replied.

“♛: What?”

“XxFoxlyxX: His luck stat, what did you do with it?!”

♛ breathed a sigh.

“♛: S#*t…”

Confused, Foxly waited for her to continue.

“♛: Meet me at the s#*tty inn in Lokle, I’ll explain what’s going on…” she instructed.

“XxFoxlyxX: What?”

“XxFoxlyxX: …”

“XxFoxlyxX: Hello?”

“XxFoxlyxX: …”

“XxFoxlyxX: Can’t you teleport me there?!”

No further replies came.

Begrudgingly, Foxly made his way to the small, shitty inn near the centre of Lokle, it took him about fifteen minutes to get there.

He stepped into the shabby establishment where a large, bulky human sat behind the till with folded arms.

“Bolst: Hello… welcome to Bolst’s… super awesome fun inn…” he said through gritted teeth forced into a shaky smile.

His face was red with embarrassment.

“XxFoxlyxX: …”

“XxFoxlyxX: Hi?” he replied uncertainly.

Bolst forced the terrifyingly wide grin even wider.

“Bolst: Please sit down… and we’ll… serve you in a second…” he replied, his brow twitching from keeping up the cringeworthy act.

“XxFoxlyxX: Bolst, are you having a stroke?” he asked, closing the door behind him as he walked into the inn.

Bolst breathed a loud gasp as he slumped his shoulder and relaxed his face allowing it to return to its usual frown.

“Bolst: What do you want…?” he asked.

The kitchen door slammed open as a pink-feathered harpy and a blue-hoodied human appeared.

“Revenberry: THIS IS WHAT I MEAN, BOLST! YOU CAN’T SAY ‘WHAT DO YOU WANT’ TO A CUSTOMER!” she exclaimed.

Bolst clicked his tongue, averting his gaze from the harpy.

She lowered her head in defeat.

“Revenberry: And what’s with the psychotic smile…?” she asked.

Bolst jumped from his chair and turned to face her.

“Bolst: WHAT THE F#*K DO YOU MEAN?! YOU TOLD ME TO GRIN LIKE SOME RETARD!” he cried.

Revenberry shook her head.

“Revenberry: No, I told you to smile politely…”

Bolst shrugged.

“Bolst: Potato potato…” he remarked with a shrug.

Foxly awkwardly inched his way across the room to one of the tables where he planned to wait for ♛.

Revenberry turned towards the man in blue; he nodded.

“Nyotalex: What would you like?” he asked, visibly worried.

He turned back to Revenberry who shot him a not-so-discrete thumbs up, he turned back to face Foxly.

“XxFoxlyxX: Hm, yes, could I have some soup?” he asked, seeing as ♛ was nowhere to be seen yet, he decided to play along with their inn-roleplay.

Nyotalex turned to face Revenberry again, she shook her head.

“Nyotalex: No, you’re not allowed.” He replied straight-faced.

“XxFoxlyxX: I’m sorry?” he asked uncertainly.

Revenberry ran up to Foxly’s table.

“Revenberry: It’s because we don’t have the materials for soup!” she exclaimed, smacking Nyotalex upside the head.

Still confused, Foxly nodded.

“XxFoxlyxX: Can I get some… roast… meat?” he questioned.

Revenberry and Nyotalex shook their heads in unison.

Foxly’s expression drooped into a wry look.

“XxFoxlyxX: What do you have?” he asked with folded arms.

“Revenberry: Bread and eggs…” she replied.

None of them said anything for a few second before Foxly finally breathed a sigh and made his order.

“XxFoxlyxX: I’ll just… have a drink…” he replied.

Nyotalex nodded.

“Nyotalex: Sure thing!” he exclaimed, turning towards the kitchen.

Foxly leaned back in his chair as Revenberry returned to Bolst to further scold him for his unimpressive performance.

Moments later, ♛ appeared out of thin air with a poof of smoke.

She sat opposite Foxly.

“XxFoxlyxX: Took you long enough…” he remarked.

“♛: Oh, my apologies, I’d hate to waste your precious time…” she replied sarcastically.

He folded his arms.

They both spoke in a private chat.

“XxFoxlyxX: Why couldn’t you tell me whatever you wanted to in Glumington?” he asked.

“♛: You have no idea what kind of people are there, I know for a fact three regulars there can read private messages, one of them isn’t even a cheater,” she explained.

“XxFoxlyxX: Seriously?! That’s like… really bad!”

“♛: Eh…” she replied with a shrug.

She looked around the inn.

“♛: Anyway… it’s the game, it’s acting up…” she explained.

Foxly cocked his head curiously.

“XxFoxlyxX: Acting up?”

“♛: That’s what I f#*king said, pay attention!” she hissed.

“♛: There was an index key overflow in the NPC database!” she explained.

“XxFoxlyxX: …”

“XxFoxlyxX: Ah yes… a key overflow…”

“XxFoxlyxX: How did I miss that?”

♛ rolled her eyes.

“♛: The NPCs, their stats, appearance and everything else is stored in an array,”

“♛: That way, you can get all the info about every NPC with just it’s ‘key’!” she explained.

“♛: It looks like ‘NPC_DATA[0] = Class1:Sword, Class2:Shield, Race:Human…’ and so on!” she explained.

“XxFoxlyxX: I get it, so by switching out the 0 you could get the info about another NPC, right?” he asked.

She nodded.

“♛: Exactly,”

Foxly breathed a sigh.

“XxFoxlyxX: I don’t see how this is related to our issue…” he replied.

“♛: Alright, so, there is this variable, it just holds the last key for all NPCs, that way if you give a number which exceeds the number of NPCs stored in the array, it’ll just loop back to zero.” She explained.

“♛: To be fair, the number is way bigger than needed, most of the arrays were blank.”

Foxly nodded.

“♛: Well, it looks like in this version of the game the player and NPC arrays are the same, they were just glued together,” she continued.

“♛: That means that some of the player base was stuck outside of the maximum number, their values were added to the first few values which would have been the stat-test NPCs,”

“♛: In other words, JohnWillStab as well as a few other relatively-new players now find themselves with billions of luck, strength, stamina and any combination of one or more stats!” she explained.

After all that, Foxly wasn’t sure what to say, he was still, very confused.

That’s when his drink arrived, Nyotalex slammed a pint of raw eggs with a piece of bread attached to the rim of the glass like a lime, onto the table.

Both ♛ and Foxly glared at the nightmarish sight in silence.

“♛: …” she looked up at the strange, blond human who served them this crime against humanity.

Immediately, she selected him and quickly looked through his stats and variables.

“Stats are normal… level is low…”

“But he should invest in a better VPN…” she thought, recognising the familiar IP, he was using one of the cheap VPNs that make the fact you’re hiding your IP obvious, her guess was that whoever this player was, he was banned once before.

“XxFoxlyxX: Dude… what the f#*k is this?” he asked, eyeing the glass vessel.

“Nyotalex: Yeah… I told you we only have eggs and bread…” he replied with an apologetic expression and a shrug.

XxFoxlyxX traded the man ten silver and pushed the pint of eggs away from himself and towards ♛.

“XxFoxlyxX: You must be thirsty after your monologue…” he remarked, gesturing for her to drink the pint of eggs.

“XxFoxlyxX: It’s ok, I got the bill covered.” He smiled smugly.

The frogwoman who sat opposite him pushed the glass back towards Foxly.

“♛: Come now, this not at all suspicious character made you a perfectly nice glass of egg, the least you could do is drink it…” she replied, equally smugly.

Foxly laughed.

“XxFoxlyxX: Chocolates are made by people, but they are designed as gifts, this pint of protein is a gift to celebrate our friendship!”

He pushed the glass back her way.

“♛: No, no, I insist, after all, unlike the cold, dead arms of a machine, this glass of chicken produce was lovingly made for you by Nyotalex himself!”

Nyotalex watched the conversation unfold awkwardly.

“Nyotalex: Uhm… he paid me… so you guys don’t really have to drink it…” he remarked.

Ignoring the waiter, ♛ pushed the pint towards Foxly.

“XxFoxlyxX: I INSIST!”

He pushed the pint back.

“♛: NO, I IN-F#*KING-SIST!” she yelled back.

Suddenly, much to Nyotalex’s relief, both of them pushed onto the pint at the same time, causing it to tip over and spill the eggs onto the ground.

He breathed a sigh as he knelt down and collected the broken glass from the ground.

♛ and Foxly didn’t even notice half of the bits of glass he managed to pick out from the foamy egg.

As he was turning to leave, he felt the two hands holding him back, shakily, he turned his head back to see ♛ and Foxly smiling unnervingly polite smiles.

“XxFoxlyxX: I’D LIKE ANOTHER DRINK.” He whisper-yelled.

“♛: I’LL TAKE TWO.” She said through gritted teeth.

Nyotalex felt his blood go cold as he simply nodded and shambled over to the kitchen where he proceeded to use up their remaining eggs.

Not long later…

♛ and Foxly were both covered in raw eggs and banned from attending the shitty inn in Lokle.

“♛: I can’t believe you got us banned from the f’*king inn…” she complained, it’s not like it was her favourite local… in fact she didn’t really like it; it just happened to be close to the capital.

“XxFoxlyxX: ME?!” he demanded.

He thought back to the horrific waves of thick, gelatinous horror that ♛ unleased not long before.

“XxFoxlyxX: WAS I THE ONE WHO USED CHEATS TO FILL THE ENTIRE ROOM WITH RAW EGGS!?” he demanded, the occasional yolk leaving his mouth as he spoke.

He looked down to his egg-covered hands in horror.

“XxFoxlyxX: People drowned in eggs… do you know how that feels?!” he asked shakily.

♛ raised an eyebrow, tired of Foxly’s pseudo-roleplay.

“♛: Do you?” she questioned.

Foxly folded his arms.

He gazed at his egged self in confusion.

“XxFoxlyxX: No… but I have a disturbing vivid feeling of what it would feel like… but how?”

He shuddered.

“XxFoxlyxX: It’s like I can still taste the egg in my mouth… literally…” he remarked.

The duo walked toward the rolling plains, more specifically the next inn.

Lokle looked like a brown-grassed steppe with large, fluffy bulls that flew around with large, angel-like wings.

Foxly noticed the large stones with ancient runes littering the landscape.

“XxFoxlyxX: Anyway… what now?” he asked, thinking back to JohnWillStab’s strange situation, regardless of the luck stat, Foxly did still consider himself responsible for dragging John into the world of gambling.

Though, it’s not like he didn’t think John went overboard, at some point, he must have known the game bugged out.

♛ breathed a sigh, her yellow raincoat glistening in the egg.

“♛: We’ll teleport to John and then I’ll figure out how to fix his stats… it’s not really my speciality… but I can probably do it…” she replied with a shrug.

“XxFoxlyxX: Probably? What if you screw up?”

“♛: Oh, you might get your character stretched across the whole map, shattering them into bits and making them permanently unplayable,” she shrugged.

“XxFoxlyxX: …”

“♛: That’s only one possibility, though.”

Her uncertainly made Foxly very uncomfortable, then again, it did seem like a good – or rather, the only plan.

Seeing he was still logged in, ♛ looked up his ID in her program, after inputting his name, she should have received a text file with his player ID.

“What the hell?” she thought.

She read over the text file and saw that John’s ID was now a “N/A”.

“♛: That son of a b#*ch is hiding his ID!” she exclaimed.

“♛: Somehow…” she added.

Foxly folded his arms.

“XxFoxlyxX: Didn’t you have to get his ID when you tried to enslave our group?” he asked.

Not focusing on the whole slavery thing, ♛ nodded.

“♛: Yeah! I should still have that saved somewhere!” she exclaimed, digging through her folder for the many logs of her cheats.

“Aha!”

She found the ID John used before the Alexander incident, since her ID and Foxly’s ID haven’t changed, it was safe to say JohnWillStab’s ID should stay the same.

“♛: Alright! Here we go!” she exclaimed.